Rules for Being a Mistress by Tamara Lejeune Page B

His hair was so perfect it looked like carved ebony. His patrician face might have been carved of marble. His light gray eyes were hard and brilliant. And his clothes were gorgeously tailored. He looked lean and fit. His shoes were polished to a high sheen. He didn’t look seedy at all. He looked dead aristocratic.
    Fleecing him was going to be a delight and a pleasure.
    “You yourself!” she snapped. “You’ve a bloody cheek showing your face here after what you did to me. If my brothers were here to defend me, you’d be a dead man.”
    “My God, it is you,” Benedict said, as if she had not said a word. “You look different. Your hair—You’ve changed your hair.”
    Her hands went to her hair. She had braided it tightly and pinned it up as she always did. She thought it looked nice. “What about my hair?” she demanded.
    “It looked orange in the candlelight,” he said. “I thought—”
    “Oh, you thought I was a redhead,” she murmured. “That explains it.”
    She had been wondering why he didn’t ask Mrs. Price for a blond girl.
    Benedict, meanwhile, had pieced it all together. Obviously, he had come to the wrong house on the night he arrived in Bath. Obviously he had behaved very badly. Of course, she had overreacted to his bad behavior, but there was no denying that he had behaved very badly indeed. He was mortified. It was one thing to try to seduce one’s own housekeeper, and quite another to try to seduce someone else’s. He could only hope that Miss Cosy had not reported his faux pas to her employer. A scandal like that could ruin his reputation.
    “I suppose,” she said, “you’ve come to collect your things. They’re in the kitchen where you left them. I’ll fetch them for you.”
    “Thank you,” he said. “I was just going to pay my respects to Lady Agatha.”
    She frowned. She didn’t want him anywhere near her mother and sister, but Lady Agatha knew he was here, and she was beside herself with joy at the thought of having a visitor. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “But be quick about it. She’s a delicacy, so don’t say anything stupid to upset her.”
    Benedict started up the steps to her. She waited on the landing, her hand on the railing.
    “You haven’t told her anything, have you?” he asked anxiously.
    “Of course not,” she said scornfully.
    “There’s no reason, after all,” he said, looking into her green eyes, “for Lady Agatha to know. She would be very angry with you, I’m sure.”
    “With me!” she said. He moved closer to her, but she did not move away.
    “Yes, with you,” he said softly. “It is most unfair, I know, but, in such cases as these, the woman is always blamed. She might even turn you out of the house. Have you thought of that? A beautiful girl like you? On your own in this cold, cruel world?”
    He traced his finger along her jaw. Her eyes widened but she did not flinch.
    “Of course, I am to blame,” he said. “My behavior was atrocious. I was not a gentleman. Forgive me?” He moved his lips to hers, and, when she still not flinch, he kissed her. It was a chaste, quiet kiss. “Am I forgiven, Miss Cosy?”
    He kissed her again. Her mouth tasted clean and tart, like a green apple. He wanted more of it. He wished she might kiss him back, but he supposed that was out of the question. A housekeeper could lose her place if she was caught in such a compromising position.
    “Come away with me,” he whispered. “Let me be your protector. Let me take you away from a life of drudgery and care. You’ll never have to work again in your life. You’ve no idea how boring my life was before I met you. Say something, my angel.”
    She stepped back from him and touched her mouth. She looked quite surprised.
    “Are you trying to seduce me?” she demanded.
    “Oh, yes.”
    “You devil! Meet me in the kitchen in five minutes,” she said. “You can shag the fanny off me then, if you like.”
    He smiled. He was a young man when he